Theft of equipment, especially expensive electronic equipment such as computers is a large and growing problem. Schools and corporations are particularly vulnerable to theft because their equipment is typically accessible for extended periods of time to numerous people in open environments. Equipment is often stolen by insiders of an organization during normal working hours. Environments such as computer laboratories, typing classes, and shared offices are examples of places where theft is common. Continuous personnel monitoring of the equipment is very expensive and difficult to implement.
Many products have been developed to guard against theft of equipment. For example, one type is incorporates methods of mechanically fastening equipment to a secure fixture. Other types include methods for detecting motion by infra-red detectors, sonar or radar. These devices are expensive and are unsuitable for open work environment where access is not restricted during certain hours.
Methods also include attaching magnetic tags to equipment. However, every possible exit from the protected area must be equipped with expensive monitoring station to detect tags leaving. Additionally, the tags are relatively easy to shield from the monitors, allowing then to pass directly through monitoring stations undetected.
Manufacturers have incorporated many different combinations of securing mechanisms into their products including combinations of bolts, strong adhesives, cables, metal plates and mechanical lock. In addition to the obvious inconvenience of fixing equipment to one place and preventing small movement of equipment in the course of normal work, the mechanical means can be pried, cut or broken during periods when these destructive methods will not be detected. Products which rely solely on mechanical fastening ineffectually rely exclusively on deterrence, since they do not detect and identify attempts to tamper with the protection.
There are also anti-theft devices which detect motion of the equipment by motion sensors attached to the equipment. Typically, a device of this type detects motion and sounds an alarm. These anti-theft devices do not have the capability of detecting motion and interpreting the motion to determine if is the type of motion for an which alarm should be sounded. In other words, anti-theft devices of the prior art have little operational flexibility.
Anti-theft devices of the prior art also require a continuous power drain to monitor the motion detecting function. The continuous power drain either requires that the anti-theft device be plugging into an electrical outlet or use batteries which are frequently replaced.